“For the Gulf of Alaska, I would say it’s mostly, if not entirely new,” Bond said. “It might be a little bit of a different story for the Bering Sea.”

Bond said Gulf of Alaska weather was unusually quiet this past summer.

“Without winds to draw heat out of the ocean and to mix up colder water from below, the near-surface waters, again, got quite a bit warmer than normal,” Bond said.

Currently, the water in the Gulf is about four degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal. That isn’t as hot or doesn’t extend quite as deep as the original Blob. At least not yet.

“A caution to add: This isn’t the new normal,” Bond said. “But still, it’s kind of alarming that we’re talking about this sort of thing again so soon.”

Pink salmon fry at Auke Creek weir poses for a picture before heading out on its big journey around the North Pacific. (Photo by Matt Miller/KTOO)

Rick Thoman, a Fairbanks-based climatologist with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy at University of Alaska Fairbanks, expects these Blob-like conditions, in combination with the current El Niño event in the Pacific, will shift the jet stream and North Pacific storm track to the east.

That could mean mild conditions, less freezing and more rain instead of snow, especially in Southeast Alaska, which Thoman said is “much more sensitive” to ocean changes.

“So, we can go wrong by a lot more for Southeast in these situations than, say, the western Gulf of Alaska,” Thoman said.

What could this mean for the children and grandchildren of the original Blob salmon in Southeast Alaska?

“I think, at this point, I would just say it’s largely uncertain what effect this is going to have,” said Andy Piston, Southeast Alaska pink and chum salmon project leader with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Piston said they’re already forecasting a weak run of only 18 million pink salmon returning to Southeast Alaska next season.

Piston said warmer water usually means less fatty zooplankton, a common food source for juvenile salmon.

Fewer calories means slower metabolism, slower growth, and reduced chances of surviving at sea. Even if they do survive out on the open ocean, salmon may return smaller and lighter.

A purse seiner fishes for salmon in Southeast Alaska in 2010. (File photo by KFSK)

But Piston said the original Blob did not have a uniform effect on pink salmon runs.

“You see a wide variety,” Piston said “Some stocks did outstanding, and some stocks right next door did very poorly. A lot did average. So part of the problem is that we don’t know exactly where in the ocean individual stocks are going, for the most part.”

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